“The Hour of the Furnaces” (1968) Film Screening by Frita’s Autonomous Cinema

Activating Yona Friedman’s Space-Chain-Phantasy-Miami (2019) as a makeshift movie house, Frita’s Autonomous Cinema—spearheaded by Orlando ‘Filio’ Gálvez and Otari Oliva Buadze—will screen The Hour of Furnaces (1968). A paradigmatic experiment in revolutionary activist cinema, The Hour of the Furnaces was authored by Grupo Cine Liberación and directed by Fernando E. Solanas and Octavio Getino. At the time of its production, the film represented the most advanced theoretical exploration of avant-garde political cinema, materializing uncompromising theories regarding the use of the cinematic image, authorship, and the politics of reception, to name but a few topics The film retains its relevance through its most enduring features, concepts and ideas, impacting on a worldwide scale every new generation that engages it. The Hour of the Furnaces has rarely been exhibited in the US over the past 50 years. Unapologetically radical, the film has never left untouched any soul that came upon it.